Status: closed @finn-oconnor
Charlotte Way should be turning 71 years old today. That’s the thing about pain, the kind so deep it’s etched into the bones and never sees the light of day. It buzzes like an electrical current, an ongoing, steady hum of a twenty year long grief that’s as familiar as her own heartbeat. Whatever light there was, whatever hope, whatever chance Angel had of still turning out good went with Grandma Lottie the day she died, buried six feet underground in a Chicago cemetery and there it remains. If Angel could dig a hole beside her, she’d leave it all behind, crawl into place, and settle into those four claustrophobic walls forever. On a day like today, she gets as close as she can. One foot in the grave, one foot out.
Angel’s sitting on the floor, just as she had been almost twenty years ago when her mother discovered Grandma Lottie’s body peacefully deceased. If nothing else, she’ll never forget the scream that changed her life from that point on, too inhuman to be her mother, too human not to be. Except, Angel isn’t five years old anymore, and she’s not playing with her Barbie dolls in the living room of her grandmother’s Chicago home. She’s no longer Olivia Way. Now, she’s Angel O’Connor, and Angel O’Connor is so high, she’s sitting suspended by some force unknown and swaying slightly upright, leaning and tilted but never once folding over. As much as she wants to lie down and curl herself into a ball, she can’t bring herself to move.
One pill more than usual and suddenly her eyes are too heavy to keep open. Was it two pills more than usual? Maybe three. Her heart beats slow and her breathing comes and goes even slower, both echoing in the vast hollowness taking up space inside of her. It’s all she hears, the only way she knows this sadness hasn’t killed her yet. But being this numb? It’s a much gentler feeling, because she can’t feel anything at all.
